Glasgow outfit Walt Disco have shared new single ‘Pearl’.
The band’s debut album ‘Unlearning’ was a cult success on its 2022 release, with Clash writer Bella Fleming swooning at its continual complexities. She wrote on its release:
Every track will have you questioning the sound – is it punk? Is it pop? Is it techno? Just when you feel content with the album flow, something will throw you completely off course again.
The band’s hectic schedule took them to both sides of the Atlantic, with Walt Disco using their downtime at SXSW last year to sketch out fresh ideas. Taking this germ of a melody home with them, new single ‘Pearl’ was completed in their native Glasgow.
Out now, it pirouettes between ideas, exploring the push-and-pull of the touring life – the excitement, the exhaustion, and the perennial homesickness.
A slice of glamorous, theatrical art-pop as only Walt Disco can provide, ‘Pearl’ is equipped with a stellar video, one that finds the band performing inside a music box, shot in Paisley Methodist Central Hall.
Songwriter Jack Martin explains…
This song dwells on the homesickness and general disconnect from regular life that can come from being in a touring band. The demands of being a musician can put both literal and figurative distance between you and other people in your life. Your touring bubble starts to feel like the only people you can truly relate to, and this can start to feel quite lonely and alienating.
In the chorus of this song, I cast my eye forward in time and consider where the consequences of this lifestyle will leave me, while also accepting that this is the life I’ve chosen and I know it’s what I’m meant to do. The song is built around the keyboard part which I first showed the band on the piano at Pearl Street Coop while we were at SXSW. – Clash Magazine
